Success Story:
Vantage Homes

MarkSystems® and LotVue® home building software provides strong foundation for growth

Business Challenges

Company was growing quickly and needed tools to help manage that growth

Manual entry of information was time-consuming and prone to human error, which could be financially costly

Reports took up to three days to create and were often inaccurate, making business decisions difficult

In the world of home building today, information is power. That doesn’t only mean you need the ability to generate and manage timely, reliable information internally to keep your business strong and growing. It also demands that you deliver equally timely and accurate information to prospects and do so in a way that cuts through the clutter and motivates them to become buyers.

Just ask Joliene Weiss and Mike Hess at Vantage Homes in Colorado Springs, Colorado. As key members of the management team at Vantage Homes—Weiss is CFO and Hess is VP of Sales and Marketing—both have critical roles to play at the company which has been a major presence in the Colorado Springs and Monument, Colorado markets since 1983.

Business has been very strong at Vantage Homes in recent years, due in no small part to the company’s ongoing commitment to technology. “We’ve been generating 30% growth year over year and gone from fewer than 100 homes in 2015 to a projected 130 in 2018,” Weiss reports proudly. Growth on that scale would be no mean feat in any market. But there’s one other detail that makes Vantage Homes’ recent performance even more impressive: All that growth has come with zero additions to the company’s administrative staff. Key back office functions such as purchasing, estimating, and accounting are managed with the same number of people today that they were three years ago!

LotVue homebuilding software has improved company efficiency

As an organization, Vantage Homes has been increasing its productivity at pretty much the same rate as sales over the past few years. It’s not just by chance; both Weiss and Hess make clear. The surge in both areas coincides with the company’s implementation of MarkSystems® and LotVue® home building software from MarkSystems.

“The impact of MarkSystems and LotVue on Vantage Homes has been huge,” says Weiss. “MarkSystems not only has allowed us to streamline our operations and develop better processes and procedures, but it has also created a new level of accountability throughout our organization.” As a lot option builder, Weiss points out, Vantage Homes is continually tracking and updating a vast quantity of information across a broad range of functions and departments—land development, lot status, purchasing, sales, contract management, construction, and more.

Before switching to MarkSystems, all that information was manually entered multiple times, a process which was not only inefficient but also rich in potential for human error. In addition, whenever information went missing or was inaccurate or out of date, identifying the source of the problem was often a challenge. With MarkSystems, Weiss explains, information is entered into the system just once and after that, it can be accessed and updated seamlessly throughout the organization. And if there is any question about a particular piece of data, it’s immediately clear where to go for an answer.

“We gained some very significant operational efficiencies when we switched to MarkSystems and when you have to keep track of options and commitments for as many as 500 lots, that makes a huge difference,” she says.

Reports that before might have taken two or three days to prepare literally require just three mouse clicks today, Weiss says. And, she adds, the level of confidence in what those reports are telling the company is far higher than before the move to MarkSystems. “When you’re working in Excel or a similar program, it’s just too easy to make errors,” Weiss points out. “With LotVue, you learn very quickly that you can trust it to deliver accurate, real-time information and the fact that it’s web-based means you can access it 24/7 from anywhere with an internet connection.”